When the looting starts, the shooting starts.

[Annamaria14]

Can you believe that Trump has just tweeted this comment? He is talking about the protests about George Floyd's death. He has also called the protestors "thugs".

Twitter has put a warning on his twitter post, saying that it "glorifies violence". It is also racist!

The "historical context" is a reference to the late 1960s, when the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" was coined by Miami Police Chief Walter Headley, in reference to his aggressive policing policies in black neighbourhoods.

The Civil War was indeed about states' rights...the right of states to enslave, rape and murder human bodies and souls for the slavers' own psychopathic enrichment.

It’s not very presidential. He is a poor leader.

However, looting is a crime and in America they use guns to maintain law and order. Most Americans are cool with that. So it’s a statement of fact. If you loot, there’s a chance you’ll get shot.

Exactly, Cara

"Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate,
and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it."

Oh that Abraham Lincoln, what did he know

(This is from his Second Inaugural Address. It's carved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in DC.)

And yet again the racists are all drawn out of the woodwork. Predictable comments like if you don't pass forged notes you won't get shot. How would you feel if your son did something daft like shoplifting, and a police officer knelt on his neck until he killed him?

Nonsense that violence doesn't achieve anything. Of course the American Civil War was about slavery. Should we have just left Hitler to crack on with things? French society was certainly greatly improved by chopping the heads off a bunch of over-privileged fuckers. Apartheid resistence was often violent (and the racist whites have never forgotten that). I could go on.

And as for saying Trump says what we're thinking? That comment says everything about the poster, nothing about anyone who isn't a racist turnip.

@dreamingbohemian

And those violent revolutions worked out so well, didn't they? The first got you the American Civil War (contrary to popular mythology, not remotely about slavery), Vietnam, and Trump. The last got you Stalin, the Nuclear Arms Race, and Putin. And Haiti is the poorest nation in the western world. Violence might change things, but does it improve anything?

This is all so historically ignorant, I honestly can't be bothered.

Anyone who says the US Civil War was not remotely about slavery cannot be taken seriously.

The idea that no one was any better off when monarchies and colonial rule were overthrown is ridiculous.

Maybe do some reading about why Haiti is so poor. Hint: it's not Toussaint Louverture's fault.

I am absolutely certain that, unlike you, I have personally lived in Haiti, and said nothing at all about "fault". I commented on how well the revolution had worked out, and the outcome is evident. And it's really amusing that you think the American Civil War was about slavery. It was a struggle between the capitalist, industrialised North, and the agrarian, feudal South for political power. Political power was predominantly vested in the South to the detriment of Northern capitalists. Most rich and influential Northerners, were slave owners. They "freed " the slaves only in 1862, a move dictated by the desire to try to make "freed" slaves into a resistance movement to support the North, as the war wasn't going too well in the early years due to the South being heavily supported by Europe. Freeing slaves was a manoeuvre, not an aim, and if your want to hear the true thoughts of some of those heroes, you should read the contemporary records. Do you know that Lincoln was firmly issued to the idea that black people were remotely equal, and wanted to deport them all back to Africa?

History, at least the history most people get taught, is written by the victors to make themselves look good. If your are foolish enough to believe that the Civil War was fought for truth, justice and the American way of life, then it isn't me showing my ignorance. It's you. Try some real history and not the potted version written by the victors. Every victor fought for freedom and justice - not a one fought for the right to exploit others, for money, power or resources. Doing that would be just crass, wouldn't it?

Violence begets violence that's why it's important to stop things before they explode into violence.
When things escalate anger and excitement blocks rational thought and causes the energy level to increase by several orders of magnitude.
de-escalating is much more difficult, the cat can never be wrestled back into the bag, all the worms will never be gathered and stuffed back into the can

against not issued

Most Americans are cool with that. So it’s a statement of fact. If you loot, there’s a chance you’ll get shot.

The Americans that I know are very far from cool with that.

It was a struggle between the capitalist, industrialised North, and the agrarian, feudal South for political power.

That agrarian feudal south was powered by human bodies, without which their cotton product would be less competitively priced and less economic to produce. So you can argue that it was states rights and economic (is that your argument?) but ultimately the dispute which brought war to bear was the north wanting slavery outlawed in all states and the south preferring to continue to be rich on the backs of the rape and murder of other humans.

Thank goodness the north won.

The man is not just a moron, but a dangerous moron! He has no empathy for anyone!

On the list of "The Lessons of History" somewhere very near the top is the emphatic self-evident that violence often acheives plenty.

The United States is a case in point, an insurrection by a violent minority who objected to paying for the army that saved them from being forced to speak French.

It has been proven how white police officers have started fires around the city to blame the protestors. They targeted affordable housing

Yes, I've seen that. Undercover officers setting off fires

Links please? I googled it but can't find anything.

Polls suggest that Biden has this in the bag. Clinton was about 3 points ahead at this stage. She lost, but she did win the popular vote remember. There wasn’t much in it at all, just a few thousand votes in a state or two. Right now Biden is about 8 or 9 point ahead. He’s no Clinton, not that much mud will stick. I’d put money on Biden winning fairly comfortably.

Trump will do whatever he can
I agree he will have no compunction about setting the whole of the USA on fire if he thinks* it might save his own skin, he will stop at nothing because in his mind no one else matters except him.

*when I say 'think' I'm being generous, he doesn't really think, there is no deliberation or reflection, he just reacts

I have to say though that the looters are doing themselves no favours, esp that guy who attacked a disabled lady in a wheelchair. I think that peaceful dignified protests achieve more, particularly in terms of changing attitudes towards black people.

If I was black and in America right now, my anger would be boundless. I would want to burn it to the ground.
Same here

It's just mind-boggling that anyone would look at Haiti's problems today and instead of looking at more than a century of American intervention and occupation, foreign support for corrupt regimes, the legacy of slavery and colonialism (Haiti only paid off its restitution to France in the 1940s), and natural disasters -- instead, they would say, oh look the revolution didn't improve anything.

So Haiti would have fared better as a French colony in perpetuity? What about the rest of the French colonies? All the colonies that are still poor today -- should they not have had their revolutions?

Do you not see the arguments you are making?

’It's important to remember that looting happens when the state has screwed up its policing so badly it's led to massive civil unrest.‘

Yes.

I think they will need to 25th him after he loses, before he declares war on Mexico and grants himself a general pardon.

@TiddlestheCat
There’s a word for someone who has a set opinion of someone based on their race: “racist”
You can’t change their attitudes as they are led by prejudice and hatred, not facts.

A black CNN reporter (and his producer and cameraman) has just been arrested while he was reporting live to air. He is clearly wearing his press pass. His white colleague from CNN is still there reporting.

If I was black and in America right now, my anger would be boundless. I would want to burn it to the ground

Yep. Anyone saying "oh why would you loot a store, that won't further your cause" is obviously speaking from a position of absolute privilege with very little understanding of what it's like to be systematically oppressed.

Biden needs to confirm Kamala Harris for VP now, it’s a no brainier - the smears on her in the primaries have been found to be false and she was right about trump on twitter.

I think he’ll lose and I think between November and January the world will be in the midst of a second wave of the virus and it will be a scary time for America.